Burning Hot
by SigmaTheta
Summary: The rise and fall of Daud's greatest apprentice. (Billie Lurk backstory, six moments from her time with the Whalers.)
1. Training

_You think you're already dead inside, but I'll give you something to live for. You'll fight for me and kill people like the ones who've hurt you._

* * *

Daud lit a cigarette and turned toward the window halfway through his Whaler's weekly report, letting his talk of training injuries among the novices fade into the background. He trusted Ivan to handle those matters on his own; he did not need the level of detail the man always insisted on giving. And there had been one obvious omission to the earlier part of his report, when he discussed the individual novices he was working with.

He waited for the Whaler to fall silent before asking, "How is Lurk progressing?"

There was just enough of a pause before Ivan's reply to tell Daud he wasn't going to be entirely pleased with the answer. "She has the talent, as you said, sir, and she learns quickly, but…"

"Yes?"

Ivan shook his head. "She is a wild thing, sometimes. Like a cornered animal in a fight. I'm afraid she may be too unpredictable for the delicate work we do." He paused again, tapping his boot against the floor. "That's assuming she survives through the end of her training. She is making no friends, fighting with the other novices the way she does. Someone may try to put her down."

Daud leaned forward, resting his forearms against the windowsill as he exhaled smoke out into the night air. "She was being hunted for months before she came here. I don't believe she knows any other way to fight."

"Sir?"

He shook his head and flicked ash from the end of his cigarette before turning around. "Nothing," he said. "I'll look in on the training tomorrow and see for myself. Try to keep them all from killing each other before then."

"I'll do my best," Ivan promised, not sounding overly confident. He placed his fist against his chest in a salute and disappeared promptly, wisps of smoke lingering in his wake.

Daud let out a sigh as he turned back to the window. Assassination wasn't a line of work that tended to attract the most stable of individuals, and many that had the talent simply lacked the proper temperament to put any of it to good use. Training the novices was therefore often a complicated process, which is why he left most of it to Ivan. Daud had an eye for potential, but Ivan had the skill to mold it. By the time any recruits made it to Daud, the roughest of their edges had already been smoothed away, and those unwilling to change had either been driven out or killed.

It would be a shame for Billie Lurk to come to such an end. Daud had rarely seen such natural talent before, incredible potential hidden away beneath the dead-eyed despair of an underfed, desperate street rat following him across the rooftops. He would hate to see it all go to waste.

Perhaps she simply required more direct action.

* * *

Daud arrived at the training room in time to watch Billie Lurk take down her sparring opponent with impressive speed and skill. She then followed him to the ground with a savage cry, pinning him with her weight across his chest, and continued to attack with unnecessary brutality.

Around the room, trainees and observing assassins shifted and muttered angrily at the sight of this, a few clutching at the handles of their blades. Ivan sighed in exasperation and moved to intervene, but Daud stepped forward and waved him away before he had the chance. Everyone except the brawlers fell silent as he stalked to the center of the room.

Daud reached out to grab Billie by the shoulder and hauled her back and to her feet. " _Enough_ , Lurk," he growled.

She whipped around automatically, a snarl curling her lips, but subsided immediately when she realized who had interrupted. She dropped her gaze meekly, tense muscles going slack in his grip.

Keeping a firm hand on Billie's shoulder, Daud glanced down at her unfortunate victim and found he recognized the young man as Thomas, another recruit he had high hopes for. He didn't look particularly impressive at the moment, staring up at the ceiling with a dazed expression and with blood gushing from his nose, but Daud supposed it wasn't fair to hold that against him. He shoved Billie forward. "Help him up."

To her credit, Billie obeyed immediately, grasping Thomas by the hand and levering him up to his feet. And to Thomas's credit, he resisted any urge to yank Billie to the floor and retaliate while her guard was down.

Daud stepped forward and took hold of Thomas's chin, tilting his head to either side to better examine the injury. After a moment, he let go. "It's not broken," he told him. "Get yourself cleaned up and back to your training." His hand shot out to the side to grab Billie's arm, halting her as she tried to edge slowly toward the door. " _You_ come with me."

She grimaced but nodded, and Daud marched her from the room.

He led her out of the building and onto one of the small balconies, and then, holding her arms tightly to ensure she was brought along, he made a short series of transversals until they were standing on the roof. Billie swayed and shuddered for a moment, but she managed to keep her feet, better than most fared after their first trip through the Void. He nodded in approval as he released her. "Sit," he commanded, pointing her to the edge of the roof.

Billie sat, letting her legs dangle over the side and peering down at the hard ground far below. She took a deep breath and began, "Master, I didn't–"

"Quiet." Daud's interruption was spoken softly, but it was enough to silence her. He came up to stand behind her, close enough to see her shoulders tense and her fingers tighten against the tiles. "When you first followed me here, I chose to give you your life," he said. "Are you still so eager to throw it away?"

She flinched and ducked her head. "I'm not–"

"You're reckless. You let your anger get the best of you and take it out on people just as dangerous as you. You're not a fool; you know the kinds of enemies you're making here." He paused to let the accusations sink in, then propped his foot up on one of the metal ventilators dotting the roof and leaned in closer. "We had an agreement: I would give you your life and a reason to live, and you would learn to fight for me. If you'd rather get yourself killed instead, leave and do it on someone else's watch. Don't waste my time."

Billie mumbled something, too low for Daud to hear. He leaned forward. "What was that?"

She turned to face him, jaw set, eyes blazing with determination. "I don't want to die," she said firmly. "I want to fight for you. I want to be one of your assassins."

"You've done little to prove it so far."

"I will, sir," she insisted. "Give me the chance, and I'll do better. I'll be the best you have, I swear it."

Daud sighed and looked out beyond her, watching the sun slowly climb over the rooftops of Dunwall. He knew what it was to be young and angry, to be so full of hate that it rose like bile in the throat. He also knew such rage could be harnessed, honed like a fine blade in skilled hands, but that it had to be done carefully.

If his instincts about Billie Lurk were correct, it would be worth the effort.

He straightened up and fixed Billie with a sharp look, and he was gratified by the way she immediately pulled herself up in response, sitting tall and at attention. "From now on, you'll train with me," he told her. "It will be harder than anything else you've done before, and I won't slow down for you. This will be your only chance. If you disappoint me, that will be the end of it. Understood?"

Billie, her eyes wide, nodded rapidly. "Yes, sir," she said. She put a hand to her chest and bowed as deeply as she could from her seated position. "I won't let you down."

"Good," he said. "We'll start immediately." He turned sharply on his heel and transversed back down to the balcony before she could make any reply.

Daud counted nearly to ten before he heard Billie's alarmed cry, and he smirked as she began to curse loudly and look for another way off of the roof where he'd left her.

It would suffice as a first lesson.


	2. The Work

"You're going to assist me on the Fischer job."

Billie frowned in confusion. She was already assisting on the Fischer job and had been for the last several weeks, working out a rough layout of the man's apartment and offices and taking detailed notes on his daily habits. Then the realization hit her, and her eyebrows shot up. "Assist you with the hit?" she asked.

Daud looked up from his desk. "Is that a problem?"

"No, of course not," she said quickly. He was giving her a chance to really prove herself; no time to be nervous. "When will it be?"

"Tomorrow morning." He tapped one of the papers laid out in front of him, and Billie recognized the shaky handwriting that filled the page as her own. "Your notes suggest the guard presence at his offices will be lightest then. It's a good time to strike."

"Right." She had definitely been confident in all of her observations a moment ago, but now a sudden doubt began to gnaw insistently at the back of her mind.

Daud took pity on her and managed to hide most of his amusement. "You're dismissed for today," he told her. "Take some time to rest and prepare for tomorrow."

"Thank you, sir," she said, backing out of the room. She wondered if there was any chance at all she would actually manage to sleep tonight.

* * *

They followed a path through the city that Billie had mapped out during her reconnaissance, though Daud could almost certainly have found a faster route on his own. He stayed back, though, and moved at her pace, did not redirect her or use any of his otherworldly gifts to navigate across the rooftops. This was a test and not a lesson.

Billie swallowed her nerves and did her best to stay focused. She'd traveled this way many times. In this, at least, she knew what she was doing.

As they approached the building from which Fischer ran his business, one of Daud's lieutenants – Lucas, Billie thought, going by his height and stick-up-the-ass posture – appeared in front of them. He saluted Daud and ignored Billie altogether before gesturing behind him and giving his report. "I've scouted ahead as you asked," he said. "The information we have seems to be correct. There are only a few guards on duty, most concentrated around the building's entrance. Fischer should be arriving shortly by coach with one additional bodyguard. There doesn't seem to be any other security beyond that."

"Good," Daud said with a curt nod. "With any luck, this will be a simple job."

Lucas finally turned his attention to Billie, staring silently, his expression hidden by the darkened lenses of his mask. He looked back to Daud. "Is she ready?" he asked, skepticism dripping from his voice.

Billie bristled at the implied insult to her abilities, but Daud placed a heavy hand on her shoulder before she could do anything to object. "We'll soon find out, won't we?" he said pointedly.

Lucas dipped his head, a clear apology for questioning Daud's judgement if not for doubting Billie's skill. "Of course, sir. I'll be on the roofs nearby, if you have need of me."

She glared after him as he transversed away, and Daud did not release her shoulder until he was well out of sight. "To be an assassin is to be paranoid," he told her. "It's not always an insult to consider the possibility of failure."

"You know he meant it as one," she said irritably.

"Do you want to prove him right, or do you want to do your job?"

Billie grumbled a bit but forced herself to shift focus back to the task at hand. She dropped into a low crouch and edged her way to the end of the roof overlooking the square around Fischer's offices. A coach arrived with its telltale screech of metal-on-metal, and she watched as her target and another guard stepped out and made their way toward the building.

Daud's voice in her ear asked, "How are you going to approach?"

"I could always snipe him from here," she said, fiddling with the catch of her wristbow.

Daud snorted and shook his head. "You're a good shot, but you're not that good. Even I couldn't be sure of a clean kill at this distance."

"Could be fun to try, though."

"Show off on your own time, Lurk. We're getting paid for this one."

"Fine," she sighed. She shifted her attention to the building and closed her eyes for a moment, doing her best to recall all the little details she'd been mapping out these last several days. Then she opened her eyes and looked again. "Open window right there," she said, pointing. "One floor above Fischer's main office. He'll be in there for most of the morning, and nearly all the guards are on the lower floors. I should only need to worry about his personal bodyguard if I go in from above." She spoke with confidence, or at least with enough false bravado that she was fairly sure Daud couldn't hear her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest.

"A solid strategy," he said, though nothing in his tone indicated if it was a strategy he would personally choose. Still, it was close enough to approval that Billie would have taken it as such on any other day and moved in immediately. When she failed to do so, remaining in a ready crouch with her heart still hammering and her fingers drumming nervously on the handle of her blade, Daud tilted his head toward her and said, "You're hesitating."

"No," she protested automatically, despite her obvious lack of forward movement.

"You've killed before."

She swallowed and shook her head. "Yeah, but…"

"But you were angry then," Daud finished for her. "It's easy to kill out of rage or grief, but assassination is a different beast. You need to find something else to drive your blade."

"I know that," she said, a little petulantly.

"Then go to it."

With a soft sound of irritation, Billie gritted her teeth and pushed herself over the edge of the roof, dropping quietly down to the protruding ventilation shaft a short distance below before she could think about it anymore. She forced her nerves down and focused solely on picking her way across unseen to the target building, moving over slanted roofs, drainage pipes, and a few wide-hooded street lamps. Before long she had slipped through the open window and was making her way down to Fischer's office, ducking between darkened rooms and shadowed corners until she reached her destination. There she stopped and let herself think again.

The bodyguard stood just outside the door, big and intimidating, but clearly chosen solely for that muscle. He wouldn't be a problem; Billie could come up with a dozen different ways of distracting him from his task without even trying. As for Fischer…

He was a pretty nasty piece of work, from all the information she'd gathered, and it was tempting to just summon up a familiar face to make the killing easier. Picture either one of the Duke's monstrous children and channel all that old rage again. She could let it be that messy. They'd been paid to send a message this time, not to make a death look like an accident or suicide. It didn't have to be neat; it just had to get done.

But she knew Daud was right, and she would not always be able to rely on that. Chances were they would sometimes be hired to kill a more decent sort of person. What would drive her blade then?

If she disappointed him, that would be the end of it.

Billie took a deep breath and made her move. She shot out a light at the end of the hall with her wristbow and slipped past the bodyguard as he went to investigate the noise. She crept up silently on Fischer, who was hunched over his desk, muttering to himself as he read through his ledgers. She imagined Daud watching her as she drew her blade, pictured his frown as he followed her movements in the training room, the slight upturn of the corner of his mouth when she'd done well.

Her hand snapped out and around to clamp firmly over Fischer's mouth, silencing any screams as she pulled him off balance. Her blade flashed in an instant later, plunging in under the ribs, angled upward and going deep. Then she pulled back and let go. Fischer fell to the floor with a spasm and a gurgle. Blood spattered across his papers and the front of Billie's grey novice uniform, began to pool around the quickly stilling body.

It had taken only seconds. She could still hear the bodyguard's plodding footsteps moving away down the hall.

Feeling strangely calm – or maybe numb, she would figure out which it was later – Billie left through the same window she entered and made her way back to the rooftops at the outer edge of the square.

Daud stood up as she approached. His eyes flickered over her, cool and assessing, and lingered for a moment on the bloodstains. "Well?" he asked.

She gave a curt nod. "It's done."

He smiled then, not just a brief twitch of the corner of his mouth, but a real flash of teeth, an expression of approval and grim satisfaction. "Good work," he said. He waved his hand, gesturing to the dark stain on her uniform. "Next time, we'll try to make it a littler cleaner."

Billie ducked her head, feeling her heart begin to beat faster once more. She knew it was no longer from nerves but the surge of pride and pleasure at hearing his simple praise, the sudden thrill at the thought of _next time_. "Yes, sir," she said. "I'll be ready."

That would be enough to drive her blade for quite a while.


	3. Gifts

Daud woke Billie Lurk from her sleep in the smallest hours of the morning, and he was amused to see her arm shift and tense before her eyes even opened, no doubt clutching some hidden knife tucked beneath her pillow. "You'd never move fast enough," he said mildly.

Her eyes flew open and her muscles relaxed. She turned and sat up quickly, looking at him from beneath furrowed brows. "Daud," she mumbled, then shook her head. "Master. What is it?"

"Come with me."

Billie gave him a questioning look but otherwise obeyed without comment, quickly pulling on boots and gloves and her thick whaling coat. When she reached for her mask, Daud stopped her with a shake of his head.

"You won't need that," he said. "It's not that kind of job tonight."

There she hesitated, if only for a moment, frowning at him before dropping her empty hand back to her side.

It was becoming increasingly rare to see her without the mask on, even between jobs. She took some strange comfort in the anonymity, perhaps, or used it as another way to keep herself apart from her fellow assassins. Billie no longer provoked and picked fights as she once did, but she still couldn't really be said to get along well with any of the other Whalers. As long as they all cooperated when it was necessary and orders got carried out, Daud didn't particularly care what any of them did. She could sleep in the damn mask if it made her happy.

But it was poor form to go begging before the Outsider with one's face covered.

He led her out into the city, away from the abandoned and dilapidated buildings serving as the Whalers' base and into the more densely populated areas that they typically avoided when not pursuing a target. Even at this hour there were still quite a few people on the streets, drunks staggering home and bored watchmen looking for trouble. They had to move cautiously.

Billie followed along silently, sending him curious glances all the while. She fidgeted anxiously whenever they stopped to wait for a path to clear or a watchman to turn his back, but she did not question him, not even when they reached their destination: an empty house just off a busy, well-lit street. Its windows were boarded up, and one of the Abbey's warning symbols had been painted over the door. They entered through a side window, where a few of the boards had been pulled loose.

The owner of the house had been hauled off as a heretic some weeks back, and the Overseers had ransacked the place quite thoroughly in their search for dangerous artifacts. Whatever was left had then been picked over by the city's more daring scavengers, and the building was now just a mess of broken glass and overturned furniture. But they had all missed the real treasure hidden here, unable to hear the singing of carved whalebone as Daud could, the otherworldly hum emanating from beneath the floorboards.

Still, it had taken longer than Daud cared for to find this place, even with his enhanced abilities. It was the peak of the social season in Dunwall, the busiest time for any who made their coin in high class killings, and the Whalers now held a fearsome reputation that pushed out most other competitors. Daud had little time anymore to wander the city alone, searching out untouched shrines for his purposes. He would perhaps need to look into delegating a few tasks someday soon, if he could find someone reliable enough for the work.

He took a few slow steps across the floor until he found the place where the boards made a strangely hollow sound beneath his boots. There he crouched and peered down to find the seams of the well-hidden trapdoor.

Billie gasped softly when he finally lifted the hatch. The eerie, blue-violet glow of the lanterns could be seen even from up here, and she would know what it meant.

He gestured for her to go down the rickety ladder before him. "Watch for traps and don't touch anything," he told her. "The sort of people who build these things don't tend to be the most stable."

"So you send me first?" But she was already lowering herself through the opening, her eyes fixed on the lights below, and her voice wavered a little underneath the wry humor.

He waited until he heard her hop down and walk away from the ladder before following. After he stepped down himself, he took a quick look around the room. Despite his warning, there were no traps to be found, presumably because there was no place to put them. It was a very small space, barely enough room for two people to move around comfortably, and most of it was taken up by the shrine. The shrine itself was a fairly standard affair, driftwood and wire and dark linen bound together at strange angles, surrounded by lanterns that somehow continued to flicker and glow without being tended. There was a carved rune set carefully at the heart of the display, and shards of bone littered the floor around it and crunched beneath their boots.

Billie stood before it all, silent and still, her hands held carefully behind her back.

"Do you know what this is?" Daud asked as he approached.

She nodded. "Shrine to the Outsider. He talks to you here."

"Sometimes," Daud said. _Not for a while_ , he kept to himself. "This time we're going to talk to him instead. I'm going to offer to share my powers with you, unless you have any objections."

She shook her head rapidly. "No, I want…" She paused, licked her lips. "I want that."

Daud smiled to himself. There was that fire he'd seen when Billie first stumbled into his territory, that hunger for something more that flashed in her eyes as they trained together. "Good," he said with a nod. "Then come here."

He led her closer to the shrine and stood her to one side of it while he moved to stand at the other. He removed his gloves and gestured for Billie to do the same, then reached across the shrine toward her with his marked hand. She put her left hand in his without having to be asked, and he turned it to expose her palm. She had the roughened hands of hard living, and it pleased him to feel the calluses from her many long hours at practice with the wide variety of weapons he'd trained her in. He looked up to meet her eye. "I can't guarantee what will happen," he told her. "You may only find yourself being a little quicker, a little more resilient, without gaining any of the other skills. You may not get anything at all. It's down to the Outsider's whim, not my own."

She frowned a little and gave him a careful nod. "I understand."

With his free hand, he drew a dagger from his belt and placed the flat of the blade against Billie's palm. He moved his left hand over top of hers, gripping tight, the cold metal held between, and then glanced up at her one more time. "I'm told it's not a particularly pleasant experience, whether the powers take or not."

She huffed out a breath, impatient. "Daud, just do it."

He shook his head. No one could ever accuse Billie of being overcautious. With a single, fluid movement, Daud angled the blade and drew it sharply back, opening both of their palms with quick, clean cut.

Their mingled blood oozed out between their hands and dripped down onto the rune below, splattering onto the wood and cloth around it. For a moment, Daud felt only the stinging and prickling of the fresh wound. Then, as the lanterns flickered and a rush of Void-song came screaming into his head, he felt the burst of dark magic flooding out, streaming along the path of blood like a river. He gritted his teeth and held tight, keeping their bleeding palms pressed flush.

This was typically the point when Daud would work to temper his expectations. There was no guarantee of success, and he'd seen plenty of promising Whalers walk away from the ritual with nothing more than a scar across the hand to show for it. But with Billie he dared to hope. His finest pupil, the greatest he'd ever trained, surely she would be able to share fully in his gifts. Surely even the Outsider could see the incredible potential here.

Billie hissed in pain and squeezed her eyes shut. Her hand spasmed and gripped his hard, blunt nails scraping against his skin. When her eyes flew open a moment later, they were black as the ocean depths.

Then the Void stopped screaming, the connection severed, and Billie jerked her hand away and stumbled back.

Daud stepped forward quickly to steady her, hands on her shoulders. "Easy," he murmured. When she no longer seemed at risk of falling over, he reached for her hand again. He wiped away the blood there and found her palm to be smooth beneath his fingers, the cut he made completely gone. That was a good sign. If the Void had healed her, it had likely granted other gifts. He let go of her hand and gently took hold of her chin, tilting her head up so he could peer into her eyes. Though her gaze was a little unfocused, they otherwise appeared normal, all that strange darkness receded. "How do you feel?" he asked.

She shivered a little under his touch. "Like I got knocked out with a brick and dumped in the river."

"That's normal," he said with a quiet laugh. "Anything else?"

She took a step back and rubbed at her forehead, wincing. "Yeah, it sounds like that damn thing is shrieking at me."

"The rune?" he asked, glancing toward the now bloodstained bone still resting on the shrine.

She nodded. "Outsider's eyes, is that what they always sound like to you?"

"It fades with time. You'll learn to ignore it when you don't need it." Daud scratched his chin thoughtfully as he looked Billie over. Now that she was beginning to shake off the most immediate aftereffects, she didn't look too much worse for the wear. And her newfound sensitivity to the rune's song was very, very promising. "This is good. We'll need to work to find out the limits of your abilities, but it seems like you gained quite a lot of power."

"More training?" she asked with a wry smile, fingers still pressed to her temple.

"You should always be training," he said, which was predictably met with a roll of the eyes. He took the rune from the shrine and tucked it into his coat, Billie sighing in relief as its song was muffled, and moved back over to the ladder. "Yes, more training, but for today you can rest, get used to how the Void feels in your bones." And then, because he could already see a familiar eagerness beginning to gleam in her eyes, he added, "Don't try anything until I teach it to you. It would be a waste if you miss your first transversal and fall to your death on the way home."

"You mean you wouldn't try to catch me?"

He sighed and pointed her up the ladder. "Go see if the streets are clear, Lurk."

She was still grinning a little, but she dipped her head respectfully and obeyed.

He waited until she was all the way up and out of sight before he let himself smile. He couldn't really fault her for the exhilaration. The power of the Outsider's gifts could be damn near intoxicating, especially when they were newly given, and he was looking forward to testing the limits of her new abilities nearly as much as she was. Billie had been a quick study with nearly everything he'd taught her, and he had no doubt she would pick up on these new skills just as readily. He was eager to see what she might do with them.


	4. Second

Billie was deep in discussion with Thomas and Rulfio about an upcoming job when one of the novices approached and said, "The boss wants to see you, ma'am."

Rulfio managed to turn his laugh into a cough quick enough that she only punched him once. She fixed the poor, confused novice with a glare and watched him flinch and cower for a moment before taking pity on him and relenting with a sigh. "Just 'Lurk' or even 'Billie' is fine, all right? Daud's the only one with any kind of title around here."

The novice nodded and scurried off, and Billie shook her head after him. "I think our recruiting standards have slipped."

"Because they don't know how to deal with you?" Thomas asked drily. "That's a rather specialized skill, I think."

"Don't make me hit you, too," she warned half-heartedly. She shoved her notes into Thomas's hands, as Rulfio was now gingerly rubbing his shoulder in addition to trying to stifle his sudden coughing fit, and made for the hallway. "I'll be back soon. Don't make any big plans without me."

The door to Daud's chambers was open when she got there, and he was standing over his desk, studying the large map that was unrolled in front of him. She waited patiently while he leaned forward to circle something and jot down a few words beside the indicated area. She couldn't read his writing from this angle, but she recognized the building on the map as one of the big Estate District homes. She hoped she would be on that job; breaking into mansions and terrorizing nobles was always fun.

When he set the pen down, she said, "You sent for me, sir?"

He nodded without looking up. "I have something for you," he said, pointing to a paper-wrapped bundle that Billie had initially taken to be merely a makeshift paperweight holding the map open.

She moved a little closer to look at the package, her eyebrow raised curiously. "But it's not even my birthday."

Daud let out a deep, weary sigh, as though Billie's tongue were somehow the cause of all of his problems. "I don't need your cheek today, Lurk. Just open it."

She smiled to herself. So he was in a mood again. She resisted the urge to push him a little further and picked up the bundle to weigh it in her hands. It had some heft to it, but it wasn't solid, giving easily under her probing fingers. She shrugged and carefully pulled back the paper.

Inside was one of the thick, leather coats of the Whaler uniform, this one the same deep red that Daud wore. Billie's eyes went wide.

There had been talk for a while that Daud was looking to name a second in command. He'd been grumbling about needing better help for months now, and most of his longest-serving lieutenants were either dead or no longer up to the task. Ivan was all but retired since a wolfhound had mangled his leg last year, and they'd lost Lucas to a watchman's bullet just two weeks ago. Billie knew she would be considered for the position – it was not overconfidence to say she was easily one of Daud's best – but if she were the type to gamble, she would have put her coin on Thomas being chosen over herself. He wasn't quite as good as her, but he was decently skilled, and more importantly, he was calm and steady and reliable, a list of traits Billie knew she couldn't always apply to herself.

And honestly, she would have been fine with that. She couldn't exactly call Thomas a friend, but they got along well enough, especially considering the fact that she nearly broke his nose the first day they met. He would be an all right man to follow, if it came to that.

Apparently, it was a good thing she didn't tend to gamble.

She shook the coat out and held it up in front of her at arm's length. When she lowered it again, Daud had looked up from his map and was watching her.

"I assume you understand why I'm giving that to you," he said.

"Yeah, I get it" she replied, and then, because a part of her mind was still on her hypothetical bet, she asked, "You're sure?"

Daud raised an eyebrow and picked up his pen again. "You once swore to me you'd become the best assassin I had if I gave you the chance. You've had your chance; do you think you kept that promise?"

"I…" She _knew_ she was the best. She was smarter and quicker and more ruthless than any of the others, and she wouldn't be holding this if Daud didn't agree. "Yes. I have."

He nodded and bent his head to add another note to the map. "Then I've made a good choice."

That seemed to be his final word on the matter. Billie considered the coat in her hands for a moment, then carefully set it back down on the edge of Daud's desk. She swiftly undid the belts and buckles holding her uniform in place so she could slide the old, dark-colored master's coat from her shoulders and replace it with the red one. It felt good, maybe a little stiff around the shoulders until she could break it in, but… really good.

Daud looked up again as she fastened her belts back into place. "It suits you," he said quietly, his voice tinged with something she might dare to call warmth.

She ducked her head at such a direct compliment, turning the motion into something deliberate by bending down to pick up her old coat. She cleared her throat and said, "Looks like we have a spare uniform now, if anyone else is up for promotion."

"So we do." He leaned back, crossing his arms as he considered her. "Did you have anyone in mind?"

The question startled her at first, but she supposed it was the sort of thing one asked their second in command. She would need to start paying closer attention to more than just her own business, make sure she could provide good advice on anything Daud might ask. She paused to give it some thought, reflecting on what she knew about the novices who had been with them the longest. "Sonja," she finally said. "Her tethering still needs work, but she fights hard and always gets the job done. I think some more challenge would be good for her."

Daud was silent for long enough that she almost thought he was going to take back his decision to promote her. Then he gave a short nod. "A good choice. We'll see if she can handle it." He returned his attention back to the map with a final gesture of dismissal. "That's all I needed you for. You can go and show off now."

He was making fun of her, but the idea was appealing. There were definitely a few faces in particular she'd like to see go slack with shock at the news of her new position.

Of course, she realized as she left the room with her head held high, this was going to make it near impossible to keep any of the novices from calling her 'ma'am' again.

She supposed she could learn to deal with that.


	5. Regrets

He shouldn't have taken the job. Daud knew that well before the Outsider made his appearance to taunt and tease, knew it before his blade had ever pierced the Empress's body. He had known it as he stood before her portrait pinned up beside a map of Dunwall Tower in his rooms and felt the unease twist and writhe deep in his stomach.

He didn't kill royalty as a rule, but that was out of practicality rather than any particular moral line or sense of loyalty. Taking out the most well-guarded people in the Empire was typically far too much risk for too little reward. He'd had offers made, over the years, had a few requests to kill the Duke or members of his family, even had someone plead with him to hunt down the descendants of some exiled northern prince – though if anyone thought he was going to pack up his people and sail to Tyvia for any amount of coin they were out of their damn mind – and he'd refused them all as a bad deal.

This should have been the same, dismissed out of hand without bothering to consider the reasons it made him so uneasy. He wouldn't have had to wonder how such an unstable city as Dunwall might fare following the sudden and bloody removal of its head, with worthless, cowardly Hiram Burrows poised to seize power. He wouldn't have had to think that Jessamine Kaldwin had always seemed unusually decent for someone of her station and that he struggled to find the evidence of corruption and brutality that always made killing nobles such a simple task.

But the money was too good this time.

He had known _that_ even without Billie at his shoulder telling him that the men would probably riot if he turned down such a payout, without her warning look to show she wouldn't be too happy with him either. She didn't care about the money, of course, never really had, but there was always a hunger in her eyes, a yearning for power and acclaim that burned all the more fiercely at the prospect of this job. Billie Lurk, who would help to kill an empress.

That fire was gone now. Dulled, perhaps, by the same doubts and regrets that now plagued him. Billie had been the one to break through the last defense, restraining the bodyguard with a masterful tethering so Daud could deliver the killing blow, then grabbing the little girl as they fled. If anyone was going to match him for guilt, it was her.

But he did not ask. That was beyond the bounds of their relationship, no matter how loosely professional it could sometimes be. It was one thing to trade friendly jibes during training or even to share the occasional personal story over cards and alcohol. It was another entirely for two assassins to discuss the morality of the job.

So he let her drift away from him, watched her discomfort turn into anger and frustration, watched her grow restless and decide to direct it all at him.

The Empress's portrait remained on the wall, and the name 'Delilah' haunted his blood and Void-filled dreams. Daud took on only small jobs, simple tasks that could be handed off to one or two Whalers and completed without his supervision. All the while, Billie avoided the privacy of his chambers, stalking across nearby rooftops when not cornering him in the hallways and demanding to know what they were doing next. Her presence was a constant itch at the back of his neck.

He called her to him, eventually, as the weeks turned to months and the city began to crumble around them.

Billie stood in front of his desk with her back straight and her arms folded. She did not remove her mask. "You wanted to see me, Master?" she asked briskly.

It was a deliberately cool greeting. She had not called him 'Master' in some years. He ignored it. "You want something to do so badly? Then I have a job for you."

Her posture relaxed a little, and she tilted her head with blatant curiosity. "What is it?"

"I need you to go out into the city and look into the name 'Delilah', find out the significance." He paused for a moment, considering how much to tell her. "It should be connected, somehow, to the Empress's death."

"That's all you have? The name?"

"Yes."

She lifted her mask then, pushing it up to her forehead apparently just to shoot him a skeptical look. "How do you even know it means anything at all?"

"It was given to me by the Outsider," he said, and he got a little satisfaction from the way her eyes immediately went wide. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the desk. "If you don't trust me not to waste your time with a meaningless task, I assume you'll take his word more seriously?"

Billie bowed her head, appropriately chastened. "Yes, sir," she mumbled. She looked up again after a moment, chewing on her bottom lip and tapping her fingers thoughtfully along the hilt of her blade. "It's still not a lot to go on…"

"I'm sure you'll manage," he said, straightening up again. "You always have before."

She puffed up a little at the compliment. "I guess it's not the most common name in Dunwall. I should be able to find something. It could take a while, though."

"You have my leave to be away for as long as it takes," he told her. "I know how to find you if I need you."

She nodded and pulled her mask back down into place. "I'll report back when I find what you're looking for," she said, and with a quick salute, she was gone from the room.

Daud let out a sigh as she vanished, feeling his shoulders relax and the tension fade. It was a strange thing, to be relieved by Billie Lurk's absence. He hoped her time away would do them both good. Billie always functioned better with a job to focus on, and Daud… he needed time to sort through this, time without a pair of fierce eyes always watching him from the rooftops.

He walked back to the Empress's portrait and ran a finger along the edge of the paper, considered ripping it down and burning it as a solution to his troubled mind, but something stilled his hand. It would do nothing to help him; he knew this. He clenched his fist and let it drop back to his side.

Before long, Billie would bring him an answer to the Outsider's riddle. By then he would have a handle on this. He would know where to direct his focus.


	6. Long Days in the Sun

So she had her life again, Billie Lurk granted yet another reprieve by Dunwall's most infamous killer.

She was smart enough not to waste any time questioning such a gift. She had quickly grabbed all the coin she'd stashed over the years and made for the river without looking back, found a smuggler willing to take her onto his ship for the right price and without too many questions. Only after that was done did she let herself stop to breathe.

She had thought this could only end in one of two ways: she'd either be leading the Whalers or she'd be dead. Now she was three days out of Dunwall, alive and alone, and she wasn't sure what to make of it yet. In a way, she felt good, clear-headed like she hadn't been in quite some time, maybe ever.

Mostly, she just felt lost and terrified. Daud had given her a goal, a target, a reason to go on living for the last eight years of her life, and she didn't know if she could build herself that same sense of purpose on her own. She was a killer, the finest Daud had ever trained, and she did not know what else she could do with those skills. She did not know if she _wanted_ to do anything else with them.

The rocking of the ship out on the open ocean was more soothing than she expected it to be, at least, and it lulled her to sleep each night despite the wild thoughts raging through her head. She'd never been aboard any kind of boat before, though she had always liked the look of them, used to watch the trading vessels and great whaling ships glide down the river from her place on the rooftops. During the days she walked along the deck, enjoying the salt in the air and the bustle of the crew. She helped out, sometimes, when they allowed it; her passage was paid, but she'd never enjoyed being idle. One of the deckhands took a liking to her early on and usually found something for her to do.

When Billie had asked the first night where the ship was bound, that same deckhand had cheerfully told her, "Cullero!" and when Billie's face remained blank, she added, "It's in Serkonos, south of here."

Billie had shrugged, explained that her whole life had been lived in Dunwall, and the next morning, the deckhand had given her a book on the Empire's port cities.

So now she read, too, to keep her wild thoughts at bay as the ocean swayed and pulled her into sleep, paging slowly through that book and feeling the world grow larger beneath her hands. With each sentence, the terror faded a little, the fear and uncertainty seeping slowly out of her bones. The world was wide, wider than she'd ever truly realized; surely there would be somewhere out there for her go, something else for her to do. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be the only one to find a new start.

Did he know, she wondered, what he gave her with his forgiveness? Did Daud realize he was granting her another life, far from the misery of Dunwall? Did he know he wanted that, too? She'd seen the coin piled up in his room once, stashed away in locked chests, and she doubted even he knew why he bothered to save it back then. She certainly hadn't known why she held on to so much of her own coin, until she suddenly found herself fleeing the city.

Two days out from Serkonos – Daud's homeland, she remembered, he'd told her that once – Billie begged paper and pen off her deckhand friend and began to write. The letter did not come easy, every word a struggle, the floor littered with blotted and crumpled sheets of paper, but she had something passably close to what she wanted to say by the time they made port. A few more coins out of her stash was enough to get one of the more daring members of the crew to agree to attempt delivery when the ship was back in Dunwall.

"Try for Fennick or Rulfio," she told him, tucking the letter inside the book and tying it shut with a length of twine. "They leave the Flooded District more often than the others, so they're easier to find." _And less likely to shoot as soon as they hear my name_ , she did not add. It was a slim enough chance already that her letter would reach its recipient; no need to scare off the messenger.

From there, Billie disembarked the ship, taking her first steps into a city other than Dunwall. She breathed deep, taking in air that wasn't steeped in plague and rot, and cast her eyes along the busy port of Cullero. There would be someone here who needed skills like hers, someone seeking a bodyguard or a spy or just some extra muscle for their smuggling operation. If not, she still had a little coin in her pockets, enough to keep her going for a while. She could pay for passage to another city, find work there. Eventually, somehow, she would find her way.

Daud had given her another chance at life, and she needed to find something new to drive her now.

* * *

 _You told me once that people like us burn hot, then burn up. We don't get a chance to start over. No long days in the sun… but that's what you gave me when you let me walk away. The one thing you said that wasn't possible. And I will never forget that. When the time comes - and it will - I hope you're watching close so you get that chance too._


End file.
